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For what it’s worth, a very close friend of mine got his Physics PhD at CERN in the late 80s (high energy particle physics) where he witnessed the birth of HTTP

by gen220 4y ago

For what it’s worth, a very close friend of mine got his Physics PhD at CERN in the late 80s (high energy particle physics) where he witnessed the birth of HTTP. This experience, coupled with the US government’s decision to not build an equivalent super collider in the 90s, led him to switch to computer science, where he had a bit of a “head start” due to his experience at CERN. He always said the data analysis, measurement, and collection stuff was more advanced than anything else in the world at the time. The original “big data”. But in 2022, this is less of a distinguishing feature in his opinion. Also, Bell Labs probably faced similar issues. I asked, and he agrees that he’d do molecular biology if he were starting over today. So you’re not at all crazy!

BrandoElFollito 4y ago
This is very similar to my trajectory (PhD in the mid to late 90's). I made friends with some people working in the computer center (the famous 513 at the time, may have changed by now). I discovered UNIX, then Linux and I was sold. During my PhD I started to work for the industry in IT and never stopped since then. CERN had an outstanding computer system, they invented the "grid". As for HTTP, it just happened to be invented at CERN when Tim Berners-Lee was working there (there was nothing special related to CERN). The hardware-software interface was bleeding edge technology (built into the detectors) and the data bandwidth capacities were ahead of their times. All of this, however, is not particle physics and if CERN did not exist there would be not much "holes" in today's computers (as opposed, say, to DARPA or Linus).